Yesterday, big tech tripped over itself with IBM’s Red Hat acquisition--for the staggering sum of $34B. Many were shocked by the news, but those that know Red Hat well--may have been less surprised. Long the leader and largest open source company in the world: Red Hat has been getting it right for many years.

Still more shocking is how this fits an albeit new pattern for 2018 and beyond. One which is completely different than the typical enterprise software acquisition of the past. Red Hat is not the first mega tech deal of the year for the open source community. (There was the $7.5B purchase of GitHub by Microsoft, and recently the $5.2B merger of big-data rivals Cloudera and Hortonworks.)

Now, with this much larger move by IBM, it brings us to consider the importance of open source value, and contribution culture-at-large.

This was a great acquisition target for IBM:

They have a powerful product suite for some of the more cutting edge aspects of web development including a secure and fully managed version of Linux, hybrid cloud, containerization technology and a large and satisfied customer base;

their products and technologies fit perfectly against IBM’s target market of enterprise digital transformation; and

the deal opens up a huge market to Red Hat via Big Blue.

And in the age we live--one focused on (and fearful of) security, privacy, data domiciles, and crypto tech--a $14B valuation, over market cap (a premium of $74/share), is a validation of the open source model shining sunlight on software to achieve more secure products.

At Phase2, this news comes with much interest. Red Hat is a company that we know very well for its contributions to open source and web technology, in general. We have worked with Red Hat since 2013 and come to respect them in several key ways.

As pioneers in the commercialization of open source, Red Hat popularized and legitimized the idea that the concept of open contribution and financial gain can co-exist. While our own experimentations with productization of open source over the years within the Drupal community were certainly less publicized, we, and ostensibly the ‘industry’, looked to Red Hat as the archetype for a modern business model that could work.

We’ve had the privilege of working for, and alongside, the Red Hat team to develop many of the company’s websites over the last five years, including Redhat.com and developers.redhat.com. Through these experiences, we have come to value the way in which they blend great talent, great culture, and open values.

On many occasions, we have even drawn parallels between their business culture and our own. After reading the Open Organization by Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, I was struck by the values and culture of Red Hat and their similarities with how Phase2 similarly side-eyes the future. Perhaps it was their open source ethos, collaborative approach, or the meritocracy (vs. democracy or autocracy) they fostered, but I felt like we were emulating a “big brother”.

FInally, but perhaps most importantly, we respect them as a business. The pure fact that a larger-than-life brand like IBM would pay such a premium implies both strategic and business health. I believe that, while in part it is earned from a strong repeatable subscription-based revenue stream, nothing creates business value like a great culture of amazing people, dependable customers, and undeniable innovation.

And now with IBM’s extended reach and additional resources, we look forward to Red Hat’s continued success and partnership.

Today is an exciting day for the Drupal community! Collectively, we’re all moving a few steps closer to a full release of Drupal 8 with the help of a program called Drupal 8 Accelerate. This is a pilot program from the Drupal Association designed to put $250,000 of community funds towards eliminating the last 50 critical issues between us and release.

The Drupal Association has been an incredible leader in the effort to release Drupal 8, pledging to set aside $62,500 to match every dollar donated to the provide Drupal 8 Acceleration Grants.

What’s the latest with Drupal 8 Accelerate?

But we knew we could do even more to turbocharge this project. Today we are announcing that D8 Accelerate is now getting a huge boost from seven anchor sponsors, who have pledged to “match the match,” amplifying every donation made and accelerating the community’s investment in Drupal 8.

Phase2, Acquia, Appnovation, Lullabot, Palantir, PreviousNext, and Wunderkraut have collectively pledged another $62,500 to match the Drupal Association’s matches of community donations. This is an all-out, everyone-in community effort to move D8 from beta to release. Our goal is to bring the total to $250,000 available for grants by September. We are now more than half way there.

Why should we all want Drupal 8 to succeed?

The answer is simple: D8 will empower us to use Drupal the way many of us have wanted to for a long time. D8 improves the API layer, multi-lingual capabilities, theming and the editor experience. It also makes is much more powerful for developers (which matters a lot to us at Phase2).

Historically, it has been a challenge to integrate new libraries or different front-end elements without a lot of leg work. Imagine, for example, how the availability of Twig theming will enhance your projects. Or how flexible implementations can be with dependencies on meaningful external software integrated through Symfony routing. We will even be able to more seamlessly incorporate mobile apps into the digital strategies we develop, correcting one of the main weak points of previous Drupal releases.

Put simply, Drupal 8 is a win for our collective clients, and therefore it is a win for all of us.

Phase2 & Drupal 8

At Phase2, we want Drupal 8 to succeed because our clients have increasingly big needs and major challenges, and we believe that Drupal 8 is moving in the direction to address those. For that reason, we’ve made investing in Drupal 8 a priority, not only by way of the Drupal 8 Accelerate program, but also in the form of contributed code and shared knowledge gleaned from major enterprise Drupal 8 implementations.

Taking on early Drupal 8 implementations enables us to commit our people to the D8 cause, while directly supporting our client’s mission. It also provides us with a group of advanced scouts to report back from the front lines and develop training for the rest of our team.

We’ll be sharing a lot of what we learned from our D8 work so far at DrupalCon Los Angeles, so stay tuned for our session announcements next!

An all-out, everyone-in effort

It took the whole Drupal community – including individuals, companies, the Drupal Association – to get D8 to the place it is now. We are honored to have contributed alongside everyone involved. It has certainly been a heavy lift for many community members, so to each of these people and organizations, we say thank you. The success of Drupal 8 is the most important priority of our community.

However, Drupal 8 still needs a strong push to get over the finish line. So we must ask one more time for the support of our fellow Drupalers. We all have a major stake in the success of the project, and everyone can play an instrumental role getting it out the door. Even the smallest donation makes a difference when every dollar you donate is now matched, compounding your impact. You can read more about how the funds actually support the grant program to achieve the work on the Drupal Association D8 Accelerate page.

If you would like to donate, please visit the D8 Accelerate Fundraising site and please consider using my profile as a way to easily make your contribution so we can start enjoying those launch parties!

This morning, we announced that Phase2 Technology and Treehouse Agency are merging to form a combined firm. We are incredibly excited about the future possibilities of this team, and hope you'll join us in our excitement.

We're choosing to come together for a lot of reasons. For years, we've been working in some of the same verticals. We both do work in the publishing space, and we've both built a reputation for innovative solutions in the government space. From our combined teams you'll see work with TheStreet.com, The Nation, The New Republic, Washington Examiner, and Thomson Reuters. Plus, our work with FEMA and the House of Representatives complements the incredible work that Treehouse has done with the Department of Energy. We are really excited to combine our experiences and expertise in these two sectors.

But this merger certainly goes beyond our mutual interest in the publishing and government sectors. At the heart of why we're joining up is because we're both teams dedicated to building elegant solutions to really tough problems -- from multi-site platforms to high-security sites to complex back-end systems.

Beyond the new offices and colleagues each of our teams now share, we'll be using this opportunity to grow as a company in many ways. Treehouse CEO Michael Caccavano will become our company's President, where he'll focus on something he has proven to be incredibly successful with at Treehouse -- finding, investing in, and developing the brightest and most talented people in our space. In addition, the Treehouse team gains an in-house design team, dedicated technical analysts, and more project managers; and Phase2 is rounding out our development team with expertise in new technologies and presence in more cities around the country.

We've never been a company who wants to grow "for growth's sake" -- we want to grow to meet the needs of our clients, develop high-caliber teams, and stretch ourselves toward the most innovative solutions out there. With shared verticals, presence in New York and DC, and most of all, an amazing team that is eager to start working together, we are beyond excited about the opportunities that lie ahead.

If you're at DrupalCon this week, please stop by the Phase2 and Treehouse booths -- we are excited to introduce you to the new Phase2.

CEO and co-founder Jeff Walpole leads strategy and firm development efforts for Phase2. Jeff has been instrumental in recruiting and managing staff, the acquisition of new clients, overseeing client engagements and leading process improvement ...